Law Beat: What rabbi admitted in civil suit deposition

Published 4:45 pm, Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Photo: Skip Dickstein

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Yaakov Weiss holds his prayer books and wears handcuffs at the Albany County Judicial Center in Albany, New York, on March 8, 2010, after being sentenced to Albany County Jail for child endangerment (Skip Dickstein/Times Union archive) less

Yaakov Weiss holds his prayer books and wears handcuffs at the Albany County Judicial Center in Albany, New York, on March 8, 2010, after being sentenced to Albany County Jail for child endangerment (Skip ... more

The 32-year-old suspended Orthodox rabbi from Colonie recently reached a $6,000 settlement with the family of one of the two youths he victimized in 2007 when they were 13.

The settlement resolved a sexual assault and defamation lawsuit against Weiss — who, in January 2010, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment for what he admitted was "inappropriate physical contact" with the boys on Whitehall Road. The crime took place at a mikveh, a bath used in Judaism for ritual immersion.

Weiss, former director of Chabad of Colonie, received 60 days in jail for his crime in 2010, but he still faced a civil lawsuit filed by the families of both victims.

Weiss complained about the lawsuit to a rabbinical tribunal in Rockland County. That tribunal threatened to excommunicate the families because they had brought the case outside of a religious setting, according to court papers.

One of the families dropped its suit. The other accepted the $6,000 settlement just as their case was set for trial in Albany on Jan. 22. The settlement sealed sworn admissions that Weiss made in a deposition to the attorney of the families.

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When the Times Union published some of those admissions, Louis-Jack Pozner, an attorney for Weiss, emailed Law Beat and demanded the admissions be removed from the newspaper's website.

"I do not know when you obtained it or from whom but because it is sealed its contents should not be disclosed," stated Pozner, who was not Weiss' attorney for the civil suit. "Kindly remove any reference in your online story to the contents of the Weiss deposition in order not to violate the court's order and the terms of the settlement agreement."

We'll give Pozner an "A" for effort. The Times Union, however, already had a copy of the deposition long before the settlement. Here at Law Beat, we have no intention of censoring information that is, while unsettling, newsworthy.

Not that we can blame Weiss for wanting that deposition sealed. In it, he admitted in graphic detail to the "inappropriate physical contact" he had with the boys.

Weiss' conduct is documented in a Dec. 12 ruling in the civil case by state Supreme Court Justice Eugene "Gus" Devine The decision noted that Weiss rubbed at least one of the boy's shoulders and had been sexually aroused.

In his ruling the judge explained that Weiss, then a teacher at the Maimonides Hebrew Day School in Albany, drove one of the boys to the mikveh in late 2007 and, while there, "Weiss approached (the victim) while the boy was naked and pressed (his genitals) against the (boy's) buttocks."

We will note that when an Albany County grand jury indicted Weiss in 2009 on two counts of endangering the welfare of a child and two counts of misdemeanor sexual abuse, the sexual abuse counts specifically alleged the rabbi had "sexual contact" with both boys "consisting of placing his (genitals) in contact with said child's buttocks."

The sexual abuse counts were dismissed as part of Weiss' plea deal to child endangerment.

In the deposition, the family attorney, Richard Ancowitz, asked Weiss if the physical contact between him and the boys was intentional or a result of carelessness.

"That was intended," Weiss answered.

Weiss also confessed in the deposition that he was lying when he claimed, in a 2008 email to the Times Union, that the allegations against him were "100 percent untrue" and were the result of a person antagonistic toward Chabad of Colonie, a branch of the Chabad-Lubavitch Chasidic movement based in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where Weiss formerly lived.

In the end, Weiss has avoided significant jail time, is now liable for only $6,000 following the lawsuit and has never had to register as a sex offender. He could have fared worse.

DA quits try to stay on case he judged

The state's highest court will not hear an appeal by Columbia County District Attorney Paul Czajka of a ruling barring him from prosecuting cases he handled as a county judge for 16 years.

Czajka wanted the Court of Appeals to review a ruling from the Appellate Division, which determined that a special prosecutor should be assigned to the misdemeanor weapons possession case of Nicholas Fox. The court declined the request on Jan. 15 without explanation.

"It's over," Czajka said. "I accept and respect the court's decision and will not be pursuing it further."

The decision sets a precedent that could affect many cases — at county expense for special prosecutors. "It won't be a major cost," Czajka said. "Most of them are minor cases and many have already been settled."

Czajka was elected DA in 2010. Earlier that year, as a county judge, he presided over court appearances in the Fox case. Last May, County Judge Richard Koweek granted Fox's motion to disqualify Czajka and his staff. Fox pleaded guilty last year to criminal possession of a weapon.

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